Chapter 1

The pain hit me so hard it felt like my soul was being ripped out of my body.

I was in the kitchen, making sweet tea, when I collapsed. A scream tore from my throat, but no sound came out. My vision went black, and I could feel something hot and wet pouring from my mouth, staining the polished cypress floors of the Blakely estate.

It was my bête spirituelle. My sacred albino alligator. He was dying.

I didn' t need to see it to know. Our spirits were tied together. I felt every moment of his terror. The metal trap snapping shut on his leg, the rough hands dragging him from the water, the sharp blade slicing through his pure white hide.

Then came the fire. The smell of gasoline and burning flesh filled my senses, even though I was miles away. His final, silent scream echoed in my spirit, a wave of agony that made me vomit blood all over again.

With his death, the ancient seal that held my true power, my identity as a Loa, began to crack.

I was Jocelyn Fuller, wife of Ethan Blakely, heir to a Southern petrochemical dynasty. That was the lie I lived. The truth was, I was a guardian spirit, bound by a pact made centuries ago to protect his family. My power was sealed inside that alligator, a living sacrifice to ensure their fortune.

And my husband had just killed him.

"Jocelyn! My God, what happened?"

My housekeeper, Wendy, rushed to my side. Her hands were shaking as she tried to help me up. She was a local woman, one of the few who still respected the old ways, the Voodoo traditions the Blakelys had built their empire on top of.

"He's gone, Wendy," I whispered, my voice raw. "Ethan killed him."

Wendy's face went pale. She knew about the alligator. She didn't know what I was, but she knew the creature was sacred. She knew it was the source of the family's luck.

"No," she breathed, her eyes wide with fear. "He wouldn't. Why?"

"For her," I choked out, another wave of nausea rolling through me. "For Maria."

Maria Chavez. The woman I had rescued from a dangerous life in New Orleans, the woman I had brought into my home. The woman who was now my husband' s mistress, pretending to be a devout Christian with a special connection to God.

She and her pet televangelist, Brother Rufus, had convinced Ethan that my alligator' s "dark energy" was a threat to the "holy" child she was supposedly carrying.

The pact was broken. The protection was gone.

My body felt like it was breaking apart, but underneath the pain, I could feel something else. A deep, ancient power stirring from a long sleep. The cracks in my seal were widening.

The fortune of the House of Blakely was about to be severed.